facebook

Just a few short years ago, social media companies were frantically acquiring, and filing-for, patents as they geared up for their IPOs. The spotlight on social media and networking companies has diminished a bit recently with the emergence of new sectors and technologies that have caught the media’s attention, such as for example, cryptocurrencies, medicinal […]

Earlier this week, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before House and Senate committees after reports that the political research firm Cambridge Analytica gained access to 87 million Facebook users’ data during the 2016 U.S. elections. During the hearings, Zuckerberg emphasized Facebook’s past and future commitment to user privacy, stating: “I’ve directed our teams to invest […]

Earlier this week, BlackBerry filed a patent infringement suit against Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp over a number of patents it owns. There has been much speculation in recent years surrounding BlackBerry’s patent monetization strategy, and questions lingered around whether the company would start to aggressively assert its patent portfolio to drive revenue. In a report […]

With the recent surge in cryptocurrencies, as well as companies in the blockchain ecosystem, Envision IP analyzed the US patent landscape of the industry. We reviewed patenting activity for all aspects of the blockchain industry – digital currency standards, digital currency exchanges, blockchain algorithms and infrastructure, blockchain front- and back-end applications, and blockchain-related enterprise technology. […]

We last reported on Twitter’s patenting efforts back in 2013, when the company had announced its patent pledge. At the time, Twitter owned only two issued patents. Since then, the company’s patent portfolio has grown tremendously, thanks mostly in part to Twitter’s acquisition of over 900 patents from IBM in 2014. The IBM patent acquisition was a […]

Bloomberg reported last week that there has been increasing overlap in patented technologies between the banking industry and traditional technology companies in recent years. Even with the recent uncertainty regarding business methods patents in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Alice Corp. decision, and with the increasing vulnerability of software and methods patents before the […]

Last week, Yahoo announced that it would pursue a spinoff of its core Internet business, while leaving its Alibaba stock in the old company. Yahoo in recent years has made a push to expand its footprint in the mobile advertising space, in an effort to compete with Google’s monetization platform. The company has also made a […]

The one year anniversary of Alibaba Group’s IPO, the largest in history at $25 billion, recently passed on September 19, 2015. Since its IPO, the company has been vigorously filing patent applications, and has amassed a portfolio of 184 US patents. Last year, in the months leading up to the company’s IPO, Envision IP identified […]

In April, Nokia announced plans to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a deal valued at $16.6 billion. At the same time, the company announced plans to divest its mapping division, which operates under the HERE brand. In recent days, media reports have indicated that Nokia may well hold on to the mapping division, while most recently, Uber […]